Who says, this T.H. Green person?
I prefer beef animals medium-rare:
Posted on 01/27/2015 12:35:16 PM PST by Al Gore Vidal
*I wrote this a couple of years ago and just came across it while browsing through my computer's files. I don't know if I agree or disagree with this line of thought now, I just found it interesting as an exercise in philosphy. Please comment and critique.
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T. H. Green argued that...
“if there are such things as rights at all, then, there must be a right to life and liberty, or, to put it more properly to free life."The right to free life. The right to not be born a slave? The right to have life, to be born or to be conceived? If humans have the right to free life then animals should too but they don’t, therefore humans don’t either.
A gazelle is not born with the right to life and freedom, freedom in the sense of the freedom to not be killed by another animal or a force of nature like a tornado etc. A hungry lioness with hungry babies kills the gazelle to feed herself and her family. What about the gazelles rights? Doesn’t the lioness have the right to hunt freely and kill what she can in order to survive? Does this mean that the prime right is the right to the opportunity to struggle to survive by any means necessary? Does the prime right represent that which the individual is free to do in nature in order to secure its safety and sustenance first and foremost, followed by the safety and sustenance of its family. The gazelle has the right (the unhindered ability) to try and outrun the lion and the lion has the right to try and bring the gazelle down.
Saying that one has the right to life is meaningless, unless you include as part of the definition of that right the freedom to exercise, unhindered, the god given abilities that will help you secure the continuation of your life. For the lion that means the freedom to use its speed and teeth in order kill the gazelle; for the gazelle that means the freedom to use its speed to escape the lion. The lion and gazelle both have an equal right to pursue their own safety and sustenance even if that means killing other “innocent” animals, either by consuming them as food or, successfully escaping and thus depriving another of the sustenance that would have been gained by them being consumed.
It’s hard to argue against animals having this right. So it could be said that in this scenario the gazelle, and the lioness and her cubs do not have the right to a guarantee of a free life in the sense that the gazelle should not have to worry about outrunning the lion. How free in the human sense could the gazelle be if it is always and forever looking over its shoulder and worrying about what the lioness is up to. Nature does not seem to believe in a right to life in this sense. In fact nature demands that its life forms freely kill each other in order to perpetuate the cycle of life. Where is the justice for the gazelle with its neck crushed between the jaws of a hungry lioness, or the lifeless body of an emaciated lion cub whose mother was not able to bring home enough food to sustain it.
But nature is not even this generous because it’s possible a new born animal will be killed before it even has a chance to exercise what tools it’s been given to secure safety and sustenance. The young animal can be killed in the womb. So the “right” is pared back even more to only include the development of the physical abilities and instinctual desire to seek safety and sustenance, to survive and thrive. Nature cannot guarantee a newborn’s environment for nature represents the sum total of all possible environments, including the ones that would preclude the new animal from even having a chance to freely attempt to use its innate abilities to survive and thrive. Is it then only the development of these innate abilities in utero and their potentialities that are an animal’s meager “rights”. Or is it possible to push back even further? For the sake of discussion let us began the cycle at the moment of a successful conception and move forward and it should be obvious that beyond that moment any number of calamities might befall the pregnant animal and negate even the rudimentary right described above.
So where does that leave the young gazelle or lion after they are afforded a conceptual starting point? It leaves them with the potential bound up in their genes and nothing more. The most fundamental or prime “right” is that of the possibility of there being the genetic potential of an individual to develop the innate abilities necessary to secure safety and sustenance for itself. This alone is what nature guarantees or what one might consider to be a natural right. The unhindered access to this possibility is the common right among nature’s creatures including human beings. I say possibility because even the genetic potential is not guaranteed in a universal sense, there being many examples of animals and humans being aborted naturally or being born with severe genetic problems that result in the individual not having the innate abilities that are needed to survive.
“If humans have the right to free life then animals should too but they don’t, therefore humans don’t either.”
There’s a mistake right there in the first paragraph, a non sequitur. You have to establish the idea that if humans have a basic natural right, then animals have it too. You can’t just make the assertion without backing it up.
I would say that someone spends too much time navel gazing. Animals have no rights.
Humans have a right to property in themselves - that is they own themselves.
Governments, of course, are trying to curtail this in every fashion possible.
I want my 90 seconds back.
Who says, this T.H. Green person?
I prefer beef animals medium-rare:
I draw an equivalency between humans and animals in a biological, material sense. The establishment of a right to free life is adopted from the quote. I thought the truth of animals not having this same right was obvious... therefore their lack equates to our lack.
I guess the question I’m really asking with this assumption of obvious truth is: Can an unexercisable right really be considered a right.
We own ourselves. But does this ownership equal a right to a free life as defined in the quote?
No, I was asserting that IF humans the right, then animals should to. But then I go on to assert that animals do NOT have the right, therefore humans do not either. I put animals and humans in the same basket because my argument is focused on survival in a physical sense as it relates to the “right to a free life” as figured in the quote by Green.
I too prefer animals medium-rare, when I eat them.
“I draw an equivalency between humans and animals in a biological, material sense.”
Perhaps, but rights do not derive from anything biological or material, so any equivalency in that regard is insufficient to establish that animals should have a right just because humans have it.
“I thought the truth of animals not having this same right was obvious... therefore their lack equates to our lack.”
That’s just restating the non sequitur in reverse. The conclusion still does not follow from the premise.
“Can an unexercisable right really be considered a right.”
Yes, having a right does not guarantee one will be able to, or even have the opportunity to exercise it. Someone who is in a coma, for example, still retains the right to free speech.
Animals have the same right to a free life as established in the quote because I put them and humans in the same biological/material category. Why did I do this? That is something I should have spent time elucidating when I first wrote the piece. I do address it somewhat in that the I’m primarily concerned with the physical security of the organism and in this sense animals and humans operate in similar fashions and are subject to the same whims of nature.
If you allow this categorical merging I think there is some logic in my argument.
I think the notion of rights is a consequence of our being creatures with free will, i.e. the faculty to discover what is good, and to choose to do it. Since each of us was created with that faculty, it would in defiance of the Creator to thwart it.
I suppose when this country’s founders spoke of self-evident truths, that’s what they were referring to.
In a Libertarian sense one has ownership of oneself and therefore the right to the free use that “property”. Isn’t this right derived from the control of the “matter” of the body.
I should have stated at the beginning that the starting point for my conception of “natural rights” was Nature not the Creator of the nature.
So the “liberty” is the guaranteed right to exercise free will.
I guess my line of argument boils the right to life and liberty down to the genetic possibility of being able to exercise that free will if and when you make it out of the womb.
“In a Libertarian sense one has ownership of oneself...”
Did you purchase yourself? Do you have a receipt or deed of ownership? This point needs to be demonstrated, if you can do it.
“Isn’t this right derived from the control of the “matter” of the body.”
If I borrow my friend’s car, I have control of it, but I don’t own it, nor do I have any of the rights associated with such ownership. Ownership of a material thing might confer rights with regard to it, but control, in and of itself? If that were the case, every thief could assert rights over whatever they laid their hands on.
“I should have stated at the beginning that the starting point for my conception of “natural rights” was Nature not the Creator of the nature.”
Well, I’m afraid that you are going to be chasing your tail in that case. How can nature give something to us that nature itself doesn’t possess?
T.H. Green:
Thomas Hill Green (7 April 1836 – 15 March 1882) was an English philosopher, political radical and temperance reformer, and a member of the British idealism movement. Like all the British idealists, Green was influenced by the metaphysical historicism of G.W.F. Hegel. He was one of the thinkers behind the philosophy of social liberalism.
As the great philosopher George Orwell stated:
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
Or as the sophisticated new-age philosopher William Jefferson Blythe III stated:
"It depends on what your definition of 'is' is."
In response to...
“Perhaps, but rights do not derive from anything biological or material, so any equivalency in that regard is insufficient to establish that animals should have a right just because humans have it.”
Would it be reasonable to say:
Even though it is true that rights do not derive from anything biological or material, the exercise of them is meaningless without there being a material world. Humans, being at least partially material in nature, tap into the power of their natural right’s by their application in the material world. Therefore the material equivalency I use put animals and humans in the same category is not entirely insufficient.
This is what’s called begging the question.
A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)
The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.
Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.
The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.
Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values. —Ayn Rand
“Did you purchase yourself? Do you have a receipt or deed of ownership? This point needs to be demonstrated, if you can do it.”
Do you need to buy or have a deed to yourself in order to “own” your body. Ownership of yourself would mean the conscious, self-control of it. And it would be in a material sense. Nobody can take over my body without resorting to the threat of violence, i.e. slavery.
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